How to Migrate from BlogSpot to WordPress with 301 Redirection

When I started my Blogging career, I started with BlogSpot, and it’s always a wise idea to start with 0 investment when you are a complete newbie. After, getting used to the basics of Blogging, my next destination was to migrate to WordPress and after migration, I thought of sharing this migrate from BlogSpot to WordPress guide.

We have already covered following topics in the series migrating from BlogSpot to WordPress

301 perma-redirection : The migration should be 301 perma-redirection or have canonical tag, else you will lose your existing search engine ranking.

Permalinks: BlogSpot permalink and WordPress permalinks are not the same, and it’s important that you fix permalink after importing everything to WordPress.

Some important things to keep in mind while migrating:

After migration, don’t delete your BlogSpot blog.

301 permanent redirection means telling the search engine that your blog is moved to a new website, and all your traffic will automatically redirect to new domain address.

Our goal for BlogSpot to WordPress migration:

Migrating visitors from BlogSpot to WordPress

Migrating BlogSpot posts to WordPress

Migrating BlogSpot Comments to WordPress

Redirecting users to the post, rather than just homepage of new domain

Migrate Feedburner feeds

Migrate BlogSpot Images to WordPress

Step by step process of migrating from Blogspot to WordPress

Step1: Export your BlogSpot blog (Just for precaution)

The method that we are using is straightforward with little manual works. But it works great. The very first step you need to do is exporting your BlogSpot blog. To do this, log into your BlogSpot dashboard, Click on Settings > Other & click on backup content.

Click on download blog & it would save your blog in the .xml format. With this, you have taken a complete backup of your BlogSpot blog & now you need to move your blog to WordPress.

Let the game start: Migrating BlogSpot blog to WordPress

If you haven’t installed WordPress, follow this guide & install WordPress on your Bluehost account. Do remember, your domain is not yet pointing to Bluehost, but we can still do everything without changing the nameserver.

This is little technical but very easy with this guide. All you need to do is edit your hosts file to point the domain to your Bluehost hosting I.P. If you are on Mac, you can use free Gas mask app to quickly edit hosts file. If you are on Windows, you can search for guide on editing hosts file in Windows.

Once you have edited the hosts file, you would be able to access your WordPress blog on Bluehost. Do remember, this is only you who can see WordPress blog, for now, for everybody else, they will be accessing BlogSpot blog only. (We will do the switch once we done the migration). This way, your blog will not be down even for a minute.

Few things to do inside your WordPress dashboard:

Go to plugins & disable all plugins

Go to posts> You will see Hello World post> Delete that

Go to Pages> You will see sample Page> Delete that

Once this is done, let’s start migrating all content from BlogSpot to WordPress. Do remember, in this scenario our target is not to lose existing ranking & traffic. So, grab the cup of coffee & follow the steps & within no time, everything will be done.

Using Blogger importer Extended Plugin:

This is a great plugin that migrated all your posts, pages, images, comments & also maintain the formatting of your blog. There are few bugs that I will tell you later, but those are fixable in most of the scenarios. You can search Blogger importer Extended from the dashboard, or you can download directly from here. Once installed & activated the domain, go to plugin settings that will bring a screen like this:

Click on Ok, let’s go & this will ask for access to your BlogSpot account. Click on Allow & on the next page it will list all the BlogSpot blogs you have in your account.

This will bring up screen like this, and you need to click on Start Import

Do notice the checkbox in the above screenshot. Keep it checked as it will preserve the formatting & slugs.

The easy part is done as your content is moved from BlogSpot to WordPress. Now the first thing you would be doing is to link the content to the users. If it’s single authored WordPress blog, you don’t need to do much. But if you have multiple writers, you need to create an id for them which is pretty easy. Refer to the below image:

If you have followed each step carefully, you have successfully migrated from Blogspot to WordPress with 301 permanent redirections. There are few more steps that are required to complete the BlogSpot to WordPress migration.

Once this is done, your blog is successfully migrated to WordPress. After this, ensure that you do the SEO optimization of WordPress else you might lose out the traffic. Submit your sitemap, configure your robots.txt file & so on.

If you have any problem migrating from BlogSpot to WP, or other question feel free to ask questions.

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A blog scientist by the mind and a passionate blogger by heart ❤️. Fountainhead of ShoutMeLoud (Award winning blog), speaker at various international forums.
Life motto: Live while you can! Teach & inspire while you could & Smile while you have the teeth.

Hey! Been awhile. Always catch your blogs through my inbox, just haven’t had time to Twitter or visit long enough to comment until now.
My question is about moving my blogspot blog to WP. I don’t really have any traffic as yet (was waiting for the move) so can I just move the posts I want to keep physically (copy and paste) to WP and then delete old blogspot blog? I have a domain and host now so can be more flexible than when we discussed the move before.
Molly

Molly you can import your blogspot blog to wordpress with 301 perma redirection, do remember you don’t have to delete your blogspot blog, else you will be penalize for Google if it’s not a 301 perma redirection. Let me know if you have more questions.

Chetan you are right, usually people just import posts from blogspot and that create exact replica of blogspot copy and thus duplication issue.
Such blogs get penalize soon. This process need utter care to pass on the link juice and page rank to new domain.

Harsh,
I don’t have much traffic to my blog yet so deleting it won’t lose any ‘juice’. All I want is some of the posts there and I can copy and paste them as new blogs to the new WP one. Is this feasible or will search engines access the old pages anyway, even if I delete the blog?
Molly

Molly if you simply copy paste the old post, that will be page duplication. In that way your new blog will be counted as spam blog.

What you can here is

Delete the blogspot posts which you don’t want to keep and remove them from search engine using Google webmaster URL remover tool.
Now apply the 301 permaredirection method as mentioned above in the post.
This way you can keep the post you want to and migrate them successfully to new wordpress blog, without hampering your traffic and link juice.
If you have any doubt or questions feel free to ask.
Regards
Harsh

@Harsh
Nice blog post.
Actually I need to know that how can i transfer my blog to wordpress with the same custom domain. I’ve purchased techeguide.com from blogger/google apps and now I want to move the blog to wordpress with the same domain. The permalink structure you have shown above would be very helpful in this process. So Harsh, Is there any way to do so?

Is it possible to migrate mysite.blogspot.com to mysite.wordpress.com. If it is possible How can i upload a text file to new mysite.wordpress.com to the root directory. How do i upoad a text file to root in wordpress. You Mentioned about ftp what’s that?

I notice you are using feed burner so you can easily migrate along with all your feed subscribers..
Apart from that your PR will be lost for first few months but you will get it back with the next update..

Thanks for your prompt reply.
Actually i have a custom domain name,thinking that using it point to blogspot.com but i have used blogspot more that one year,all will have to starting from zero again if i using new custom domain name.

If you use custom domain to point to blogspot.. It will not make any difference..
But if you planning to host it somewhere else..Like self hosted wordpress blog.. Then you might face little problem at the beginning and later on once Google crawler get used to your 301 perma redirection.. Every thing will be normal.

I’m trying to follow your directions to migrate my wife’s blogspot blog to a hosted wordpress blog. For some odd reason, the blogspot blog is not redirecting at all. I see the meta refresh tag in the source and it seems correct, but the page never actually refreshes. Any ideas?

I hope you have uploaded the bloggerpost file at the root level of your domain.
This post is intended for blogs which are hosted at root level of your domain but not at the domain.com/blog level.

Please crosscheck that, because many user used the same process for migration and it worked for them
If for some reason, you can’t figure it out, you are always welcome to hire us for professional serviceshttps://www.shoutmeloud.com/services

Kenwooi
i know there are several ways.. but this is the way I prefer because I used the same method to migrate my blogspot blog to self hosted wordpress blog. Infact For my clients I use the same method along with few extra milestone.
This guide will help you completely, in case you are not familiar with the technical terms, You can always hire us for do the migration for you.https://www.shoutmeloud.com/services

Guy it depends … Some host give a replica of files in root into public_html so you can upload it anywhere.. Either in the root or it may be www or public_html. Depending on the installation directory of wordpress.

I’m saving this post as a bookmark – will try to do this later (I’m just about to test wordpress, so I have it in a folder in my root for now). One question rise though; I have 3 different blogs on blogspot – is it possible to transfere them all into the same wordpress blog using the method you have described in your post?

Hello Harsh, I am using a custom domain in my blogger blog. I want move my blogger blog to wordpress and want to use this same custom domain with WordPress. Following this tutorial, can I do this without loosing traffic and permalinks ? Please reply soon.

How to move a blogger blog hosted independently on custom domain. I believe to do this you need to add A-records through your DNS management option on the domain registrar. But the dilemma is that the domain registrar says to point your the name servers to their name servers in order to do this which I don’t want to do since my blog is hosted somewhere else.
Can you guide me how to achieve this without the need to change my name servers.
Any help would be much appreciated.

your information is spot on and is the best detailed tutorial for moving from blogger to WP.
Awesome work!
Just wondering, if i follow everything above, I will not lose google page rank, search engine spots from google right? And, will this import all images associated with each post? Sorry for lengthy questions.

I have a blog in blogger without a domain name.I want to move my blog to wordpress without buying a domain.Should i buy the domain before moving from blogger?Is it neccessary to buy hosting on wordpress?

@Sangeeth
1) It’s a good idea to get a custom domain name first and then move to WordPress after Google indexed your blogspot blog links with custom domain links.
2) You need to buy hosting and you can grab one from Bluehost using this special discounted link.

Thankful to you for providing awesome content. These are very helpful to newbies like me I have a doubt regarding this article. My site techbulk.com is currently on blogger platform I want to migrate it to WordPress. If I migrated to WordPress, will it affect my blog traffic?

This is what I need! It seems that blogspot has already given me full knowledge about blogging, now this will be the time to migrate it on wordpress platform. Thanks a lot for this guide, this is very helpful for me..

I have helped one of my friend’s blog from Blogger to WP about 2 years ago. At that I have googled about this and then did this. But it was really a tough task to be done because we wont want to loose any thing in terms of SEO. But here you have provided a complete information about it. Many of the doubts are cleared in comments & reply.

Hi I have migrated my blog from Blogger sub-domain to my own domain on WordPress. All the redirections are working except the mobile re-direction. Upon accessing my blog through mobile, its still showing my old blog on Blogger. I have copied your above code in .htaccess file but its still the same issue. I didn’t disable the mobile template as mentioned above at the time of doing re-directions and now the mobile template option is not showing on my blogger profile. Please tell me how to fix this.

I recently moved from blogger to WP. I was using custom domain name on blogger too. After migration, I am using in-cPanel cloud flare service. I discovered that all my other websites in same cPanel are properly running on CF CDN. But only this website (blogger to WP) is still serving pages from hosting IP and not from CDN. I check on few online tools where they say your site uses Google CDN 😮
Is anything else needs to be done in context to CDN after blogger to WP migration?

I have helped one of my friend’s blog from Blogger to WP about 2 years ago. At that I have googled about this and then did this. But it was really a tough task to be done because we wont want to loose any thing in terms of SEO. But here you have provided a complete information about it. Many of the doubts are cleared in comments & reply.
But Permalink will get changed or still remain the same… and how to change all permalinks if automatic id is generating in full permalink.

Hello sir, I started blogging on blogspot with a godaddy custom domain. And I bought a hosting package also for wordpress and I did migrated from blogspot to wordpress.
Please help me connect my godaddy domain to bluehost hosting package… Please help me as soon as possible.
Thank you

i have recently move my blog from blogger to WordPress. every post ranking on 2nd or third page which was on first page before migration. i have follow these step with 100% accuracy . can you guide me on how to manage webmaster and analytic after migration. Or is there anything which i am missing ?

Hello Harsh, I started my automobile blog five years back, and purchased a custom domain early last year only. Right now, my blog (www.wagenclub.com) in blogger platform has more than 400 posts with some amount of regular traffic for select posts and topics, but I’m facing mediocre performance with less than average overall traffic or alexa ranking. I would like to move my blog to wordpress, but my question is my blog too old and heavy to do that? My posts have many images and videos content, along with internal and external links. Does that make the process any tedious? I should not lose the existing traffic as well. Help me pls.. 🙂

Nice sharing.I am sure that blogger is one of the most popular and best blogging platform. It is more helpful than WordPress for the newbie bloggers. But blogger was built with some limitations. The most important factor is you have no control on your site. Google can do anything, anytime. Besides blogger customization options are not enough. On the other hand WordPress is really a smart and up to date blogging platform. It is better SEO optimized site. So you need to migrate from Blogger to WordPress. Your article will be helpful. Thanks for sharing with us.

hello,
nice information about migration from blogger to WordPress. i follow all your direction but, but my blog recently started, bloggers blog have 50 to 60 post only, so in my case, there is no need to take more precautions..steps followed by me as per your article
i match permalink ,
delete all post and pages
.html add in permalink

Hello harsh, I have been a great fan of your blog. The information you provide is so clear and understandable.
I have a query, once I have imported my blogger to WordPress what all I need to do as your post just wrote “Submit your sitemap, configure your robots.txt file & so on.” So do you a post related to this? I wanted to confirm if my blogs SEO will affect ?